What goes on in Weymouth at night? (Weymouth in general)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Weymouth in general
Date:	03/10/09 (30 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice beach and setting. Shame about.....hmmmm.

Disadvantages: It's a genuine question that's troubling me, that headline. I worry the answer is 'nothing good'

Fantastic beach? Georgian seafront? Picturesque harbour sprinkled with gently jostling fishing boats? English RIVIERA? And. according to these reviews, people go there regularly on holiday for a FORTNIGHT? Can there be possibly two Weymouths in Dorset, and does that mean that yesterday, I went and visited the wrong place??

Well on the (only) main road on the way in I did notice the gigantic Morrison's supermarket on the hill overlooking the town. The picturesque harbour was not so much a mooring place for charmingly-painted fishing boats as a large centre-of-town marina, packed with modern yachts and complete with two concrete block-shaped multi-story car-park eyesores adjacent. This harbour was exactly, EXACTLY like a municipal car-park for boats. And once we we were in the town proper, I couldn't help but notice the big scruffy retail centre with the Halfords, the Matalan and the KFC. Less said about the RSPB 'bird reserve' - sited, with apparently no intentional irony whatsoever - right beside the KFC - preserve of domestic ducks and staffed (around lunchtime, on Friday 2 October 2009, by a supremely dick-headed, supercilious pillock - I mean the dark baldy chap with the specs and the unfortunate manner) the better. As we were driving down the 'esplanade' on the way out of town - the one with the great big concrete sea-defence / barrier that obscures all view of the coast - we were channelled past a slightly tacky Pirates mini-golf adventure and a country park that looked like it would be south-west dogging-meet-central, after dark, and eventually into a residential area at the back of were the discretely-security-fenced gates of a gigantic holiday park from hell.

None of this quite marries with the 'beautiful Weymouth with bells on' I've read about in the previous dooyoo descriptions.

My over-riding impression of Weymouth - and once again, this is a personal viewpoint garnered during what was admittedly a very brief visit - was totally different. Although certainly, even over the few hours we spent there we did meet friendly, native Weymouthians who were very proud of their town, who'd lived there all their lives, and who were happy to tell us about it. But it's one of these places your frequently find in Britain these days, the natural beauty of which - sorry, Weymouth - seems to have been entirely wrecked by some eejit having built a medium-sized, ugly, sprawling and currently rather run-down town on top of it.

On paper it should be great. The town is situated in a large bay, sheltered at the western end by the Portland gravel spit - a continuation of Chesil beach - and bordered by white chalk cliffs to the east. There are two long, beautiful honey-coloured beaches in and just outside of the town, steeply-sloping as they're made up almost entirely of tiny to fist-sized chunks of smooth amber-coloured flint pebbles. The white cliffs and the dodgy-looking land-slipped area of grey cliff just outside the town tell you that this is all part of Dorset's Jurassic Coast - recently designated a World Heritage Site on account of it geological importance. You won't find many fossils on Weymouth's beaches, admittedly, as they're all flint, but it's material that's weathered out of the chalk so that's all right. On the beach itself there are little patches of damp sand lower down, between the tongues of flint, in which the kids can play at sandcastles. The sea is blue, the water is clear and looks clean, and in the sheltered bay in summer (I'm presuming in summer as well, though we visited in autumn, as it's a life-guarded swimming beach during the holiday season) the waves curl gently onto the shore. There is a block of modern, pastel-coloured beach huts on the out-of-town beach near some childrens' paddling pools, and a couple of picturesque painted wooden ice-cream huts there too.

And then beside all this loveliness you've got that blasted busy, busy road, the towering concrete-eyesore coastal defences and several of the tackiest possible trappings of an English 'seaside holiday' town - by which I mean that grim-looking town-edge carvery pub-restaurant, the doggers' favourite bleak country park and then as if looming in the distance, the knowledge that you're scarcely a mile from Stalag Holiday Camp 17. And what else goes on here at night? There is another RSPB reserve (not staffed, happily, this time) but the entry to the carpark is guarded by very closely-positioned, serious-looking concrete blocks - of the type you more usually see placed outside airports, to dissuade vehicle-based suicide bombers. They clearly take their 'defences' very seriously, in Weymouth, but this 'precaution' was so extreme, and severe (we quite literally couldn't get a standard Vauxhall Astra through the access gap for cars they'd left without hitting concrete with our side-mirrors) that it was, frankly a bit scary.

I can't easily imagine what's so heinous that could possibly go on in an out-of-town RSPB car park that it would require such an extreme form of deterrent to be put in place. This is not bloomin' Beirut! My imagination runs to - well. It can't be international terrorism, so I think it's better left unsaid. But it's put me even further off Weymouth, that.

Incidentally, I saw some 1930s Art Deco houses that were mostly in need of renovation, but nothing overtly Georgian during my visit. All gone to out-of-town shopping centres now, I expect.

Summary: Some people clearly like to visit Weymouth. But they like staying in holiday camps there too.